sculpin

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Any of various marine and freshwater fishes chiefly of the family Cottidae, having a large flattened head with spines, few or no scales, and often fanlike pectoral fins.
• noun A scorpionfish (Scorpaena guttata) of California coastal waters.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A callionymoid fish, Callionymus lyra, having at the angle of the preoperculum a strong compressed dentate spine; a dragonet: more fully called yellow sculpin. See dragonet, 2, and cut under Callionymus.
• noun A mean or mischief-making fellow.
• noun A cottoid fish, especially of the genus Cottus (or Acanthocottus), as C. scorpius of the northern Atlantic; C. grœnlandicus, the daddysculpin; C. æneus, the grubby of the New England and New York coasts.
• noun A hemitripteroid fish, Hemitripterus acadianus, occurring in deeper water than the true sculpins off the northeastern coast of America. Also called deep-water sculpin, yellow sculpin, and sea-raven. See cut under sea-raven.
• noun A scorpænoid fish, Scorpæna guttata, of the southern Californian coast, there called scorpene. See cut under Scorpæna.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun Any one of numerous species of marine cottoid fishes of the genus Cottus, or Acanthocottus, having a large head armed with several sharp spines, and a broad mouth. They are generally mottled with yellow, brown, and black. Several species are found on the Atlantic coasts of Europe and America.
• noun A large cottoid market fish of California (Scorpænichthys marmoratus); -- called also bighead, cabezon, scorpion, salpa.
• noun The dragonet, or yellow sculpin, of Europe (Callionymus lyra).
• noun the sea raven.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A small fish of the family Cottidae, usually lacking scales. Often found on river bottoms and in tidal pools.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun any of numerous spiny large-headed usually scaleless scorpaenoid fishes with broad mouths